


if you wanna make it through the night

by alexanger



Series: good/bad/dirty [4]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Fair Folk, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 03:08:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10208096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexanger/pseuds/alexanger
Summary: He can no longer tell the difference between night or day, nor between waking and dreams.





	

Something has been set in motion and he doesn’t know what it is, he doesn’t know what it  _ is, he doesn’t know what it _

 

* * *

 

The world has suddenly become large and daunting and Hamilton can feel himself faltering, feel himself slowing, feel the world chasing him down.

“I cannot keep this up,” he cries to Eliza in the evenings. “I’ve done too much and I’m far too tired - the work never ends -”

“Then stop,” she always tells him. “You’ve done enough. Perhaps it’s time to rest.”

And he acquiesces, in the moment - but the next morning he’s fighting again, both against the world and against the solid weight on his chest.

 

* * *

 

Eliza has noticed the pendant. She touches it softly, with something like fear; Hamilton has to choke down the the horrifying impulse to tear into her throat with his fingernails.

He doesn’t want her touching it. Doesn’t want her looking at it.

“Why -” she begins to ask, and he can see anger swirling in her eyes.

“He,” Hamilton says, and then he breaks and he’s whispering, “he, he, he - he gave it to me, he -”

And Eliza nods and knowingly says, “John. I understand.”

She  _ doesn’t  _ understand, it’s  _ not  _ John, but Hamilton lets it drop.

John isn’t metal, isn’t stone, isn’t  _ there. _ If he were to wear something for John it would be an acorn, something plucked freely from the ground, a tiny loss that couldn’t harm a tree. Or perhaps trees know how many acorns they drop and how many go missing. Maybe they know how many are consumed, how many children are lost. Perhaps each lost acorn pains them in their souls.

He weeps for his own lost child and muses on acorns and wonder if Laurens is dropping acorns yet - if Laurens is an oak - is Laurens an oak? Or is he something else, a sugar maple, a birch?

Acorns, it has to be acorns, has to be oak, because Laurens had eyes the colour of the husk of an acorn, that peculiar green-brown. Laurens had freckles dotted like the seeds on the underside of the leaf of a fern.

When one carves memories, where are they carved? To carve into wood is to carve into something perishable; to carve stone is to promise permanence. It would be a betrayal to carve John’s name into the stone of his heart. Better to let that name rest beneath the sky, where he lived, where he died.

Metal isn’t John. Metal is unfamiliar and cold, none colder than the pendant that thuds against his sternum with every motion.

Metal is chill and biting like Jefferson’s eyes.

 

* * *

 

He’s dizzy all the time now. He can’t always track where his feet are. Sometimes he’ll lift one foot as if to mount a staircase and it will plunge, unchecked, to the floor, and the drop makes his brain ache and whirl. Sometimes he’ll put a hand out as if to open a door and realize that he’s in the middle of a room. Sometimes he knows, with certainty, that he’s in his office, just down the hall from Washington, and he’ll turn and see his bed.

The sky mocks him. When he’s outside he feels it pressing down on him and it  _ aches  _ in his chest like nothing has ever ached before.

He can no longer tell the difference between night or day, nor between waking and dreams.

 

* * *

 

Hamilton has picked up the habit of chewing his lips. He nibbles idly until he feels the right give and then pulls, tears a strip off. Usually it’s painless but sometimes he bites too deep and then his lip begins to bleed, and he doesn’t always notice.

He chews his lips at work, in his office, and one evening - one morning - one year - Jefferson walks by, looks him over, steps inside, closes the door.

There’s that scent again. Rushing. Horizon. Salt? Damp wood, rotting.

Jefferson steps closer and touches his thumb to Hamilton’s lip. It comes away red.

Hamilton stares. “Is that mine?” he asks, and his tongue feels heavy in his mouth.

“Mm,” Jefferson says. “It would seem so.”

He licks the blood off of his thumb.

Hamilton stares, aghast, so shocked that when Jefferson bends over and  _ sucks  _ the blood from his lip he can’t bring himself to react. He sits woodenly in his seat and breathes hard, and he isn’t sure whether the rust he tastes is from his mouth or from Jefferson’s.

Jefferson pulls away. He licks his lips and grins, and there’s red on his teeth.

“Why did you do that?” Hamilton asks.

“I didn’t,” Jefferson says.

His lip is swollen and he can  _ see  _ the red on Jefferson’s teeth but there’s something there that he can't help but believe. Mostly. There’s a tiny part of him that knows that isn’t true and it’s that part that forces out the words, “I saw you.”

“You didn’t see anything,” Jefferson says. His voice is soft and reassuring.

“I was bleeding -”

“You aren’t bleeding, Hamilton,” Jefferson says.

“But -”

Jefferson is close, suddenly, far too close, holding Hamilton against his chest. He presses his lips to Hamilton’s forehead. “You aren’t feverish,” Jefferson says. “Are you quite alright?”

“You - tasted it -”

“I’ve only just gotten here,” Jefferson says. “I haven’t had time to taste anything.”

Hamilton sits, stunned. He closes his eyes, allowing Jefferson to hold him - but when he opens them again, it’s dark outside and Jefferson is gone.

His heart feels too tight. 

His lip is bleeding.

 

* * *

 

Does Laurens know Hamilton has betrayed him?

Hamilton writes him a letter. He blinks and there are shreds of paper in his mouth and he can taste ink and ash.

His stomach feels full.

 

* * *

 

He flips a page in his journal and there’s a week missing. There’s no sign of any pages having been torn out, but the fact remains that it skips from 1781 to 1801.

“That isn’t a week,” Laurens says from the doorway.

Hamilton bolts upright and shouts, “John, John,” and a proud head appears from around the corner. Hamilton hurtles towards him and tangles his hands in the luxurious curls and sobs, “John, dear God, I thought you’d gone, I was going to see your tree but I could never learn which one was yours -”

Then teeth fasten in his shoulder and Hamilton cries out, and Laurens dissolves in his arms and it’s Jefferson holding him up with his arms and his mouth. There’s  _ pain  _ that barely registers in Hamilton’s mind, and when Jefferson unclenches his jaw, there’s the sensation of blood dripping. The feeling is very far off.

“He was here,” Hamilton says.

“Yes,” says Jefferson. “What have you done to him?”

Hamilton falters, chokes out something that  _ must  _ be words - what else could come out of his mouth? - and Jefferson soothes him, brushes his hair out of his face.

“I won’t ever tell anyone what you’ve done,” he whispers. “I won’t tell a soul what you did to him.”

And all Hamilton can feel for a long moment is relief. Then the moment passes and the blood drips, and he leans his forehead against Jefferson’s shoulder and drifts.

“Please check my journal,” he says. He can’t explain but Jefferson seems to know exactly what he means.

“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he says, and he points to the number  _ 1781 _ and says, “This is the year 1800.”

Numbers swim before Hamilton’s eyes and it’s far too much effort to argue, so he simply says, “yes,” and the ink changes shape as he watches, coalesces into  _ 1800, _ just as Jefferson said.

It’s a good thing he has Jefferson to look out for him. It’s becoming very difficult to tell exactly what’s real.

 

* * *

 

“There’s a hole in my chest,” Hamilton says to Eliza one night.

He repeats it whenever he has a chance. “There’s a hole in my chest,” he tells her, and she nods and looks sympathetic but she never  _ does  _ anything about it. She doesn’t clean or bandage the wound - and he knows, without looking, that it’s festering and rotting straight through his sternum.

She checks it for him every so often, moving his pendant and checking beneath it. “It’s a little red here,” she always tells him, “but nothing else. Perhaps you should remove the necklace -”

But he find that he can’t. His fingers won’t undo the clasp.

He waits until he and Jefferson are alone together, and he strips off his shirt and points and says, “there’s a hole in my chest.”

Jefferson nods. “That’s a very serious wound, Alexander. Let me clean it for you.”

He fetches a basin, boils water, wets a cloth, dabs the edges of the ragged rotting pit Hamilton can suddenly see in his chest. He wants Jefferson’s hand to reach into him and clench on his lungs. He wants Jefferson to reach into the gaping cavity beneath his ribs and place an acorn inside his heart.

“My wife lied,” he whispered.

Jefferson glances at him and grins. “Everyone lies. Everyone but me,” he says.

“Everyone but you,” Hamilton agrees.

“But I’ll always tell you the truth, Alexander. You can trust me.”

Hamilton blinks and he’s home, checking the wound on his chest.

There’s nothing there. Jefferson must have healed him.

It aches where the pendant rests.

 

* * *

 

There are gashes in the sides of Jefferson’s neck. They aren’t bleeding but the edges flutter.

“Are you alright?” Hamilton asks, and Jefferson lifts his hands out of the basin he’s been soaking them in.

“Perfectly,” he says. The gashes slowly disappear.

 

* * *

 

Was that when he was bandaging Hamilton’s wound? Or was there another basin, another darkened room, another Jefferson? Was it really Hamilton who was there?

 

* * *

 

“I can’t take the necklace off,” Hamilton says to Jefferson as they lay side by side.

“I know,” Jefferson says.

“Why can’t I take the necklace off?”

Jefferson turns to look at him. It’s a long, measured glance, and then he says, “it’s iron, Alexander.”

Hamilton breaks then, weeps, and Jefferson is holding him and cradling his forehead against his chest.

“I despise you,” Hamilton sobs.

“I know,” says Jefferson.

“I should have known the necklace -”

“What necklace?”

“The iron,” Hamilton says. “The necklace you gave me.”

“You aren’t wearing a necklace,” Jefferson tells him.

That makes sense, somehow. Slowly the sobs subside, and then Jefferson is rocking him, both of them completely silent aside from Hamilton’s ragged breathing.

“It isn’t iron, then,” Hamilton says. His voice is weak.

The grin is audible in Jefferson’s voice when he says, “oh, it is iron. But it isn’t real. It doesn’t matter.”

It doesn’t matter. So everything is alright.

 

* * *

 

They don’t fuck anymore. Jefferson likes to strip and hold Hamilton close against his skin, which is always curiously cold; but he’s never hard, and he never touches Hamilton intimately.

“Why don’t you touch me now?” Hamilton asks one night as the dark swirls around him.

“I don’t need to claim you anymore,” Jefferson says. “You bore me. You’re so  _ pedestrian  _ \- there’s no thrill now that I’ve got you tamed. You weren’t even particularly difficult. You’re amusing, at least; but that will pass and then I’ll be done with you.”

“You’ll let me go,” Hamilton breathes, but as he says the words he knows they aren’t quite right.

He can feel Jefferson grinning behind him, the chill of his breath gusting over the nape of his neck. “Oh, no,” he says. “No. I don’t surrender my toys. I use them up. Every part of them.”

He should be scared, he should be terrified - but it’s a relief to know that, perhaps soon, he’ll have space to rest.

He’s so tired.

 

* * *

 

“Burr is taunting you,” Jefferson says.

Hamilton snaps awake at his desk. He’s managed to cut his finger on the knife he uses to trim his quill, and he wordlessly offers his hand to Jefferson. Jefferson doesn’t disappoint; he crosses the room and sucks Hamilton’s finger clean.

“What should I do about it?” Hamilton asks.

Jefferson hums around his finger, pops it out of his mouth. “Tell him he’s out of line,” he says at last. “He intends to pick fights - show him you aren’t afraid and you won’t back down.”

“That seems reasonable,” Hamilton murmurs.

“He accuses you of harbouring some secret grudge, but it isn’t secret, is it, Alexander?”

“No,” says Hamilton.

“Tell him. Tell him every grievance you’ve ever had - you remember them all, don’t you?”

“Yes -”

“Draw him into the open.” The points of Jefferson’s teeth shine in the candlelight. “List them. Prove to him that you’re unafraid. Show him the man you are. He’ll lose his nerve and back down.”

“He will?”

“I swear,” says Jefferson. His eyes gleam.

 

* * *

 

When the challenge arrives, Jefferson is by Hamilton’s side. Hamilton reads the letter aloud. The words hang in the air between them, ringing in Hamilton’s ears.

Jefferson slowly breaks into his predatory grin. “Well,” he says. “I suppose you’ll be needing a second.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos keep me going. chat to me at [alexangery.tumblr.com](http://alexangery.tumblr.com)


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